Superintendent ties student gains to health care, poverty-focused strategy

ALBANY — In a district where roughly 70% of students come from families receiving government assistance, Dougherty County School System Superintendent Kenneth Dyer says academic progress cannot be separated from the realities students bring with them to school. Increasingly, the data suggests he’s right.

In an end-of-school-year review of the district’s strategic priorities, Dyer laid out a clear argument: Addressing non-academic barriers — from health care access to food insecurity — is not peripheral work but a central driver of student achievement.

“This board asked two questions: Are we creating conditions in which students can learn … and then are we willing to address those non-academic barriers that impact student learning?” Dyer said. 

The concept tethering academic growth to external influence is not new. The 1966 Coleman Report, officially titled Equality of Educational Opportunity, was a large-scale federal study mandated by the 1964 Civil Rights Act and among the first to show that a child’s home environment is the strongest predictor of academic success, a finding that has held up over time.

Despite recommendations, Georgia has historically failed to include specific “weights” for economically disadvantaged students in its funding formula to address the evidence. Despite slow movement at the state level, the district sets annual legislative priorities and continues to press for traction through sustained advocacy.

“You know, as we like to say, there’s more than one way to get to Walmart,” Dyer said, using a moment of humor to underscore how the district pieces together funding for programs that address non-academic barriers despite gaps in state support.

But according to the data presented during the review, that approach, while less than ideal, has delivered considerable results. Over the past decade, the Dougherty County School System has built one of the largest school-based support systems in Georgia, designed to meet students’ needs beyond the classroom. 

The district now operates eight school-based health centers, two dental clinics and a vision center — a network that since 2013, has delivered 69,727 medical visits, 60,574 dental visits, and 6,333 vision visits to students. Intentionally located in what were some of the district’s lowest-performing schools, for many families the services provided replaced care that was otherwise out of reach.

“Parents don’t have to take off work and choose not to get paid … to get their child seen,” Dyer said. 

Centering its strategy on addressing poverty — one of the strongest predictors of student performance — the district is drawing on national research showing that home and community environments often exert a greater influence on achievement than in-school factors. Dyer said the root of instability across those categories is almost always poverty.

Students facing economic hardship are more likely to experience food insecurity, limited access to health care and unstable living conditions, factors that compound over time and contribute to persistent gaps in test scores, graduation rates and overall academic attainment.

The mechanisms are both immediate and cumulative. Studies show that hunger reduces concentration and memory, increases absenteeism and behavioral issues, and is directly linked to lower literacy and math performance. Lack of access to medical, dental and vision care further disrupts learning through missed school days and untreated conditions, while chronic stress associated with poverty can impair cognitive development. 

Taken together, the data reinforce a growing consensus among educators: Academic struggles are often downstream of unmet basic needs, and addressing those barriers is essential to student outcomes. 

The approach reflects a broader shift in how the district defines its role. Rather than treating poverty as a background condition, leaders are addressing it directly through what Dyer described as “wraparound supports” aimed at stabilizing students’ daily lives. 

Those supports are built around a simple premise: Students who are hungry, sick or unable to see clearly are far less likely to succeed academically.

Dyer has consistently framed poverty not as an excuse but as a variable that must be planned for.

“Student poverty is closely linked to student achievement … but it does not have to be,” he said.

That philosophy is now showing up in the district’s performance data. During its recent charter renewal review, Dougherty County reported that from 2022 to 2025, student performance gains outpaced the state in nearly every major category, including an 8.6-point increase above the state average in elementary content mastery and an 18.5-point gain in high school math. Across grade levels, the district reported consistent improvement in both literacy and math.

At three of the district’s highest-poverty elementary schools, where resources were intentionally concentrated, the gains were even more pronounced. Content mastery increased between 15 and 22 points, math scores rose by as much as 28 points, and literacy rates improved by double digits over a four-year period. The results, Dyer said, reinforce the district’s strategy. 

“Not only is it theoretical … we have data to show it works,” he said. 

The scale of the district’s support system is notable. 

Dougherty County now has the highest number of school-based health centers per capita in Georgia, according to Dyer, a model designed to eliminate barriers such as transportation, lost wages and delayed care. The same philosophy extends to nutrition and other support services, as the district continues to respond to widespread food insecurity and other economic pressures affecting students.

According to data provided by Growing Food Connections, Dougherty County has the highest rate of food insecurity among all Georgia counties. Dyer highlighted the district’s nonprofit partnerships that coordinate surplus food distribution to the at-risk families. Since the program started in 2018, 397 tons of unused, unopened food has been redirected from Dougherty County Schools lunch rooms to student families within the district. 

According to Dyer, to date, almost 40,000 families have been served by the program, impacting an estimated 97,000 children in Dougherty County. 

Still, Dyer acknowledged that the model comes with limits. 

Georgia remains one of only six states that does not provide additional funding weights for students in poverty, leaving districts like Dougherty to rely heavily on grants and local reserves to sustain services. While targeted investments have produced measurable gains in select schools, expanding that level of support across an entire system remains a structural challenge, one that local leaders argue cannot be solved with temporary funding streams.

The data increasingly leave little ambiguity: Where resources are aligned to address poverty, academic outcomes improve. 

Yet the state’s current funding model has not kept pace with that evidence, a disconnect that continues to inform and drive Dyer’s advocacy at the Capitol. Without sustained, predictable funding, those gains risk remaining isolated rather than systemic. 

For Dyer, the issue is no longer whether addressing non-academic barriers works, it is whether the funding model will catch up to what the evidence already shows.

“We don’t take those challenges as excuses, we take them as motivation,” he said.